Jason Kenney, the Harper government’s minister of employment and social development, headed off to Germany recently, his latest foray into the problem of the skilled-labour shortage and how to end it. This time, Kenney wants to tinker with Canada’s industrial apprenticeship and training programs, hopefully coming up with something that will stem the widespread outrage over the temporary foreign workers program.

Born with the intention to provide a temporary bridge over the skilled-labour shortage, the TFW program has turned into an all-out free-for-all as greedy companies push to the trough to get their share of cheap labour with which to replace their Canadian workers.

In the meantime, sponsors of well-run TFW programs that actually help keep Canadians working — like our own union’s — are tarred with the same brush as fast-food outlets that can’t be bothered to pay a living wage to their Canadian employees.

The way the Conservatives have handled the TFW mess, can we trust Kenney or anyone else in the federal Conservative caucus to recommend reforms to our apprenticeship and training system that will actually work?

Let’s start with what we have. The four-year apprenticeship program for boilermakers is demanding. It’s a combination of classroom and practical work that graduates a journeyperson who can work both efficiently and safely on projects as varied as oil refineries, ship construction and other heavy industrial installations.

The program is demanding because it has to be. The consequences of a bad weld in a pressure vessel in a safety-sensitive area would be catastrophic. Think of a rupture involving thousands of gallons of flammable liquid under pressure in a liquid natural gas processing or storage facility. These are the kinds of projects on which our members work: the kind where there is no room for error and safety concerns are paramount.

Our union, and the contractors with whom we work, make a very real commitment to training. Together, we have established leading-edge training centres throughout Canada to help our apprentices learn and to help our working members upgrade their skills. That’s an annual commitment worth millions of dollars and it shows on job sites across the country.

We are proud to have one of the finest apprenticeship programs in the world. It is an example of what can be achieved when workers, employers and educational authorities in every province work together toward a common goal. If anything, Kenney would do well to study our training systems in more detail before he looks for solutions offshore.

To us, it appears that Kenney’s effort could be aimed more at watering down our apprenticeship system than making it better. It will all be done in the name of productivity, efficiency and competing in the global market. But in the end, we suspect it will lead to catastrophe.

In the meantime, we have more Band-Aid solutions. For example, there’s the proposal to import thousands of Filipino welders who would be certified by test centres set up by the Canadian Welding Bureau in the Philippines.

And the new trade agreement between Canada and South Korea promises to open the gates to another barely-regulated flood of foreign workers into Canada.

Do industry and government honestly believe that a torrent of workers trained in different standards, procedures and even languages, will be productive in a Canadian environment?

Past experience says it won’t work.

B.C. Energy minister Rich Coleman claims we need Filipino welders because Canada doesn’t have welders trained in the specialized techniques used in liquid natural gas development. I’d say he has that backwards. In fact, I’d challenge the Coleman to tell me what aspects of welding Canadians can’t handle.

Is there an alternative to weakening apprenticeship programs and the wholesale import of foreign workers? In a word, yes.

Rather than tinkering with a training system that already works, why not strengthen it for the future while using the TFW program the way it was meant to be used — to bridge the temporary skill gap?

Why not then engage in meaningful discussions with people who are already providing world-class training for a new generation of skilled, Canadian workers?

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the “X” in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.